Food Waste for Sustainable Packaging Materials

Plastics are considered the materials of the 21th century. During the last 150 years, they have been the key of innovation and have contributed to the development and to the progress of our society. The largest application is in the packaging sector, but thanks to their versatility and high efficiency, plastics have become key materials in many other sectors. Plastics are efficient during the service life, help to avoid food waste and save energy. At the end of their life, they can be re-used, recycled or allowed for energy recovery. Ultimately, due to the large amount of production, they are becoming even more wastes. In order to guarantee a sustainable development, taking into consideration the fast-growing population, the food security requirements and the climate change problems, the most efficient solution needs to be chosen. Special attention has been recently devoted to chemicals isolated from food waste, coming from food processing industries and considered renewable resources. In this contest, plastics obtained from those resources have been considered as sustainable alternatives to petroleum-derived plastics. Approximately 99% of the plastics produced in the world are obtained from petroleum resources. According to Plastic Europe (Plastics- The Facts, 2017), from 2015 to 2016 the European plastic production is increased from 58 to 60 million tonnes while the world plastic production is increased from 322 to 335 million tonnes. Asia (with China and Japan) is the largest producer of plastics (about 50% of the total production), followed by Europe (19%), USA (18%), Middle East Africa (7%) and Latin America (4%). For 2017 and 2018 further increments of þ 2.5% and þ 1.5% are estimated. In Europe, the total converter demand is of 49.9 million tonnes, with a demand more than 3000 million tonnes from the six larger European countries such as Germany (24.5%), Italy (14.2%), France (9.6%), Spain (7.7%), United Kingdom (7.7%) and Poland (6.3%). Production, demand and waste management of plastic materials give a great contribution to the world circular economy.